Nik's Saga

I found the fabric for my spanish gown. Six and a bit metres of beautiful black brocade that cost an arm and a leg in spite of it being at 40% off in the sale.

But it was so perfect I had to have it. It drapes beautifully. There's no way, however, I'm going to have the gown finished for Rent-A-Don. It's definitely one of those cases where I have to make a full toile first and go from there. Plus I'm going to need a huge amount of braid for it (I will be paying Calontir Trim a visit for that one - I've already selected the trim I want, I just have to work out how much of it).

The gown itself will be based on the portrait of Anne of Austria, Queen of Spain. Very black, huge sleeves, very Spanish. I'll also have to do the lace for the ruff and the edges of the undergown, so it gives me a reason to try needlelace. Actually, I'm trying it for something else already, but that won't be for garb so it doesn't count.

Which means I need something else for Rent-A-Don. And, as it happens, I have some more heavy brown and gold brocade that should make a very rich sideless surcoat. Then again, it's a nice heavy brocade, and heavy is probably not my friend if I'm doing an SCA event and a week and a bit of work in Aberdeen. Damn. Looks like I may have to travel light then.

Oh well - maybe I can at least get the new corset made instead. Damn this flying thing!

This morning is quiet, bright and sunny. The storm has finally blown itself out.

And by goodness, what a storm it was! 36 hours of torrential rain and strong gales - the only thing it was missing was thunder and lightning. It was certainly not the sort of weather during which I'd have liked to have been approaching Iceland in a viking longship. Or a modern car ferry, for that matter.

The wind screamed around the house, pushing at every crack trying to get in. At 03:00 on Saturday morning it found one - and woke me up by blowing the window open. It continued to blow all day and most of last night, prompting me to decide against going out at all yesterday, which means I'll be off shopping later today.

So this morning it's quite beautiful again. The low sun is casting long shadows and reflecting of the remaining patches of compacted snow that have survived the wind and the rain. People are outside again, walking normally instead of leaning a long way into the wind. There is silence other than the sound of the Glerákirkja bells calling the local Lutheran faithful to their Sunday devotions and the occasional cawwwkk! of the local ravens.

The peace and quiet is wonderful.

Well that was exciting. Syed and I have just taken the toilet apart and, more importantly, put it back together so that it works properly.

For me, it all started when I went into the bathroom this morning, did the needful and then flushed the toilet. It made an unhappy gurgling sound and proceeded to provide a fraction of the water needed for a good flush.

So I mentioned it to Syed when I went downstairs. At this point we were both distracted by some fantastic cloud formations - the ones where ice in the atmosphere makes it looks like the clouds have been covered with a thin layer of oil and therefore shine in all the colours of the rainbow.

All three of us then ended upstairs on the balcony watching the skies while Doug and I took photos. Conversation returned to the toilet problem, which Doug suggested was a leak in the outflow side.

Syed and I then proceeded to take the toilet apart. The toilets here are not the normal UK depress lever or pull chain variety, but rather the scandinavian press button or lift knob type, narrower across the tank than the UK type and using a vertical valve system rather than the horizontal ballcock we're used to.

After a bit of hunting for a large enough spanner we got the valve out of the system and I took it apart to give it a closer inspection. A little rubber washer appeared to be upside down, blocking the water egress rather than allowing it, so I reset it and we put the system back together.

And it worked! It fills, it stops and flushes again. Hurrah for us!

What did I say about falling on my knee again? I only fell once, but of course it took the brunt of the fall. sigh. Still, I can now add played ice hockey to the list of crazy things I've done here in Iceland.

It took a while to find a pair of comfortable boots - the fourth pair I tried on were great, but I was lousy on the first three and barely made it around the rink without falling over. Once I had the other set on though I was fine and, I think, surprised those folks who'd seen me struggle in the previous boots.

A fine time was had by all, I think. Syed had never skated before, but he's completely hooked and we've agreed to go skating once a week in future. I may even buy myself my own skates in that case.

For now though, I'm just going to rest my knee. And maybe hope that it doesn't snow too much so I don't feel bad about not going boarding on it. Terribly selfish, I know, but I hurt!

If it wasn't for the fjord, the air quality and the lingering snow, that is.

Right now we have a marvellous force 9-10 blowing up the fjord from the south west. It is grey and wet and thoroughly like the west coast of the UK. It's wonderful.

The Icelandic Met Office issued a severe weather warning earlier today predicting high winds until tomorrow lunch time. It should be really interesting driving along the fjordside to the ice rink this evening, just to see what the water's doing if nothing else.

And why would I be driving to the ice rink? The faculty student society (each faculty has its own) have arranged an evening of ice skating and ice hockey. Fortunately I already know how to skate so I've got a head start on a couple of other folks on this one. I've never played ice hockey though, and from what I've seen and heard it involves a lot of fighting. Or maybe that's only Canadians. :)

My knee is still giving me a bit of gyp, so I'm hoping not to fall over too much - and I must avoid having it hit with a stick or the puck too, I suspect. Or maybe see if I can get some kneepads to protect it as well.

And maybe change into jeans rather than normal fabric trousers too.

Time for another update on what's going on elsewhere in this country that's too beautiful to believe.

Iceland doesn't have much in the way of heavy industry. It has some aluminium smelting and a bit of mining, but not much else. Most of the economy is based upon the fishing fleet, which manages the north atlantic stocks pretty well as far as I've heard. It is, however, a rather worrying thing to have your economy dependent upon one sector.

So the mining and smelting business is growing, with a number of foreign companies coming in to provide technical expertise. Of course, these companies have to comply with the stringent Icelandic social welfare regulations.

Or at least that's the theory. Over in eastern Iceland an Italian company, Impreglio, is building a nice new dam. Unfortunately it is importing cheap labour from the far east because they're cheaper than local or even european labour and will work for less than the Icelandic minimum wage. Impreglio are not only now swapping out expensive local/european labour for these low-cost economic migrants (as opposed to high-cost economic migrants like me), but they're also refusing to meet with government ministers to discuss the matter. The Icelandic Workers Union (yes, we have one and all workers are automatically members of it, including me) claims that Impreglio "have little interest in working within limits set by unions".

The government is fighting back. A couple of days ago it refused entry to over 50 workers from China and Pakistan. It is refusing to grant work permits to Impreglio staff until the company fall in line with Icelandic social welfare regulations. I suspect that it's going to be a long fight, and another argument in favour of staying out of the EU - look how badly EU companies treat their workers!

Other things of note: Forget the Iraqi elections, or the swearing in of George W Bush, the most important international event is the Men's Handball World Championship in Tunis. Iceland are now placed third in their group, having lost 34-33 to Slovenia in their opening group match then defeating Kuwait by 31-22.

Nothing like a bit of sport to keep your perspective spot-on.

I like the washing machine. I like the fact that it makes even the muckiest and smelliest of clothes clean. Clothes like my heavy linen chemise (my fencing armour).

Yes, I know I haven't done any fencing over here to get it smelly, but I did lend it to Joe at the Klakavirki meeting because he didn't have an arming jacket to prevent the armour from biting him. Finally today I put a pile of whites through the wash including the chemise. And yes, I know it's almost a fortnight since I got back, but with three of us in the house using the machine time does seem to elapse between washing loads.

Another thing I've discovered I like is fabric conditioner. Back in the UK I never really used it, as the water was quite soft wherever I lived. Here though, we have a lot of interesting salts in the water - one of the reasons it smells of sulphur - and fabric conditioner does help soften the clothes somewhat.

In spite of, or perhaps because of all of the strange salts in the water, the water itself is quite pleasant to the taste. It comes out of the tap cloudy, but that's gas rather than sediment, and it disappears after a couple of minutes. I'm trying to get back to drinking water again, as I've been just too tempted by Egil's Mix, a very pleasant orange and lemon fizzy drink. It's a little strange though - I looked at the prices in the supermarket today and it turns out that this locally produced stuff is more expensive than the imported Fanta or Coca Cola. Most odd.

The water here is pretty much straight from the aquifer, without too much done to it in the way of purification and the like. The Icelanders are justifiably proud that anything that isn't salt water is safe to drink. So while it isn't a good idea to try drinking from the Glera just down the road it's probably only because of the diesel-engined diggers that spend their time sitting in the pool above the dam dredging the silt. There's certainly no need to buy imported mineral waters when the stuff that comes from the taps is so good.

It does make the shower smell funny though. :)

I'm a happy bunny. I have a fully-serviced car and it set me back less than I thought it would, leaving me to ponder whether or not to give in and buy a ski-lift pass.

Realistically, I'm going to wait to see if the snow returns. The big melt continues and I can now seen grass in many places around the town and the university. OK, so it's not green grass, it's more a sort of khaki-yellow grass, but it's definitely not snow.

The ice in the car parks is still quite slippery where it is still ice, although there are now large areas where it's just water or mud. I'm quite astounded at how quickly the thaw is occurring. Of course, the snow may return just as rapidly...

I hadn't realised just quite how badly the car needed a service. When I got it back I was rather surprised at how quiet the engine was. Oops! Still, at least I now have a local garage (and a very friendly one at that) so I can get back into the habit of having reguar services in future. It had been a year and a major change of driving conditions since the last one, so I can't complain really. I even got a little Shell Helix service record book with a picture of Schummi on the inside cover. Something else to practise the Icelandic on, I think, although I was quite pleased that I was able to make sense of most of the items on the reciept.

I'm so happy tonight I think I'm going to break open the bottle of 0.5% Blue Nun I picked up in Bonus (the cheap and cheerful supermarket). I don't care if that's slumming it, I've always had a liking for Liebfraumilch if I'm not actually paying attention to what I'm drinking. :)

I don't think I'm going to be able to go boarding on Wednesday after all. I don't think there's going to be enough snow.

I haven't experienced a Big Melt before. We had a small melt before Christmas and, to be honest, I wondered what the fuss was about. I'd been told tales of roads down which the meltwater flowed like rivers, of car parks made treacherous by a base layer of solid ice surmounted by a thick film of water. But during the pre-Christmas we just had groud that was a bit wetter than it had been, nothing too terrible.

How wrong I was! I drove to work this morning (for reasons that will become apparent later) to find that the main road, Borgarbraut, to be practically flooded with fast-flowing water. At the university the lower car park wasn't too bad, but the surface of the upper car park had me (and a number of other folks) clutching at cars to keep my balance and trying desperately to keep to the recently-gritted areas where the grit hadn't been either swept away or sunk into the water layer.

I'd taken the car so that I could get a recommendation of a good garage and then drive straight there after work. I had to cross the upper car park in order to visit Stefan, our office bod, who provided me with the name and location of a nearby garage. I prefer to use the small garages if I can - partly because it allows me to support small local businesses rather than the multinationals. A small swipe at megacorporations, if you will.

So after work I headed up to the garage (which is conveniently not too far from the house, as it happens), where I amused the mechanic by having a strange foreign car with the steering wheel on the wrong side. It's not a difficult problem to fix (I think the term is rather in need of a service) so I'm taking it in first thing tomorrow, at which point they'll give me a lift down to work. Hurrah!

I so like civilised societies.

After the high of the boarding thing, today I find myself a) sore and b) frustrated by the network problems that Siminn seem to be having this weekend.

It's not just the legs that are sore, but also my upper arms too. The most acutely painful is my left knee, and I didn't even injure that on the board, but when I slipped on the ice on the way up the hill. I went down hard onto the kneecap, with the result that it's very swollen, painful and difficult to walk on. Actually no, it's difficult to walk downstairs on it but it's not too bac on the flat. The boarding muscles are just plain sore, but that I'm prepared to put up with as a natural byproduct of doing something crazy.

Liz and the Moose dropped by earlier, having given Syed a lift back from the slopes. They were just checking to see that I was still alive and mobile - which I am, mostly. :)

No, the frustration comes on two counts. First, my network access is very erratic here in the house right now, as there must be a DNS problem somewhere. I think it's time to find me a new DNS while I'm in the office tomorrow and see if that will solve the problem. Until then I have no network, ergo no web and no email.

The second frustration is that my car is now officially In Need Of Garage Attention as it's started to misfire quite badly. I'm told that there's a Toyota garage on the outskirts of town that has all the kit to do diagnostics and everything else but is 20-30% more expensive than the smaller garages. The other alternative is one of the little garages which might not be able to fix it - but I've been hit with that problem in the UK, a garage that claims to fix things, takes your money but doesn't actually solve the problem. People here in Iceland though seem fundamentally more honest on that front, so I'm going to have a word with various folks tomorrow and see if I can get a garage recommendation. One that will get my car back to me by Wednesday morning so I can give Doug a lift into town for an appointment later in the day.

Actually, with my knee the way it is, I'd really like to find a garage that's quite close. Somewhere I'm not going to cripple myself walking to and from. After all, I need to rest it and let it heal in time for my next boarding trip, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday.

I did it. I went snowboarding. And I'm going to do it again.

The day didn't exactly as planned, but I did the boarding bit anyway. I won't go into my thoughts on the lunchtime entertainment, as Liverpool couldn't have kicked their way out of a wet paper bag today, but once the torture was over I went out to get myself a pair of gloves and a pair of goggles. Both of which, I'd been told, are vital boarding gear. And who was coming out of the ski shop when I arrived but Liz and the Moose, who'd already been boarding this morning.

So rather than going up to Hlíðarfjall I went back with them to try on the slope behind their flat. The slope goes from the A&E department of the local hospital down to the back of their building. An excellent place to start as I wouldn't have far to go when I broke my wrist - broken wrists are the most common serious snowboarding injury, it seems.

The first bit - getting the board onto my feet and turning over to a kneeling position ready to get up - was no problem. I astonished myself by managing the rolling over on my stomach with a board attached to both feet with surprisingly little difficulty. Then the real problem began.

Going from kneeling on the snow with the board perpendicular to the surface to standing with the board on the surface is harder than it looks. It doesn't help that I have a lot of weight to push with my short arms. The eventual solution (after trying several other things) was to use a convenient spade to extend my reach, but I'm getting ahead of myself here...

I had imagined that the first time I got onto a board I would go rolling down the slope out of control to end up as a pile of crumpled and broken wreckage at the bottom. This was not the case. After careful instruction by the Moose on the physics of snowboarding and how to control the board by moving your centre of gravity I made it to the bottom of the admittedly-short run only falling over once.

I didn't get any sense of what snowboarding was like on that run. I was too damned scared and too busy trying not to tumble down the slope like a giant conker or fall flat on my back. Then it was back up the slope (not easy, I have to say, as I sank practically to my knees in snow at each step) to sit on my board, shaking gently and trying not to burst into tears of relief while I watched Liz and the Moose practice jumping off a carefully sculpted mound of packed snow.

The second run was much better. I wasn't anywhere near as scared this time, and I could feel how the way I shifted my weight affected the movement of the board. It was wonderful! It's like doing the Time Warp in slow motion - pelvic thrust and going insane. Instead of just going straight down backwards I found I could move slightly and go sideways one way, then another shift and I was going back the other way again. I was doing the classic 'falling leaf' thing down the slope. Without style or grace, I'm sure, but it was the falling leaf all the same.

I could get hooked on this. Particularly as ski centres have lifts to get you back up to the top. I could have carried on for quite a while just doing the downhill thing, but the climb back up was a killer. Fortunately we have a slope here in the garden that has potential for practising these basic maneouvers - although I've been warned I probably won't be able to try it tomorrow as I'll be too sore.

Still... I am definitely going to be doing more of this.

It's Friday, so it's been a long day in the office. I like to be in half an hour before my first lab of the day just in case anything has gone wrong over night, so I was in just after 07:30.

It was actually quite an interesting lab, as it was the first serious programming lab I've done on functional programming. Last semester's stuff was pretty tame (all introductory stuff) and it's nice to be giving a course that looks like the advanced bits will stretch my students a little.

I was due to have my first Icelandic lesson today, but unfortunately they're being held in a building across town at a really inconvenient time - 15:30 on Friday afternoons. As soon as we start our departmental seminars (within the next couple of weeks) it's going to be really difficult to get to them, and I don't want to register then not be able to attend.

This spread-out-ness is another instance of why I need my car. Unfortunately it's started to stall at low revs for some reason. Once it gets daylight tomorrow I'll check the plugs and all that - it's possible that it's just iced up and the spark isn't getting through properly. Otherwise I'll have to ask around for a garage recommendation. I hope it'll work tomorrow (it starts no problem, it's just staying running that's the difficulty sometimes) as I want to get up to Hlíðarfjall in the afternoon because we've been promised a clear, bright day.

In the meantime though, I'm planning a quiet and relaxed evening - do a bit of Qi Gong, a bit of reading and a bit of embroidery. And thinking of embroidery, the more observant reader may have noticed that the sidebar on the left has a new item - A&S. This links to docmentation and pictures of some of the arts and sciences stuff I do within the SCA. Things like embroidery and mediaeval science, including the documentation for, and lots more pictures of the goldwork I finished recently.

Enjoy!

Yes, it is nearly 21:00 and I'm just back from work. And it was all Micro$oft's fault again.

Well, maybe not entirely Microsoft. The Moose and I have just spent a couple of hours installing the software I need to tomorrow morning's lab - the 08:00 one - as the other system support folks hadn't had time to do it. Occupational hazard, I suppose. It seems that Service Pack 2 has done something to Windows Installer which meant we had to do a lot of fiddling with zip files and so on. Never mind - it'll stop being a problem on February 1st when we move into our new Moose-administered linux lab.

On the up side, I got three lectures written today and confirmed that my disappearing for a fortnight in the middle of term was OK. And I got myself a helmet ready for the weekend (as I didn't get up to the slopes today). The consensus of opinion is that I'm either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid or both, but folks are curious to know what I think of it once I've tried it.

Working late has an unfortunate side-effect: I'm wide awake, even more so that I normally am at this point. The 3 cups of coffee today may have had a bit of an effect, but I prefer not to think about that. :)

Of course, it's dark now, and snowing. Snow in the air at night has a very strange effect on the quality of light, in that it scatters the sodium glow of the streetlights in a way that gives the whole world this curious yellow-brown cast. In spite of the snow though, it is definitely getting lighter in the afternoons. Today the sun dropped over the mountains at about 15:00 and was much further to the west along the horizon that it has been for a while. It's possible that in the summer it will rise so far to the east, rise so high, and set so far to the west that I won't actually see it directly out of my office window all day.

Perhaps I should start marking the positions of sunrise and sunset on a diagram somewhere. Then again, that might be just too geeky even for me. Or maybe not.

I think I have been the comic highlight of an Icelander's day.

At lunchtime I went back to the ski shop. It was far quieter than it had been yesterday afternoon - presumably because most people are at work - so I had a chance to actually ask for recommendations and so forth. In the end I came away with a nice new pair of boots and a second-hand snowboard for just under £160, which isn't bad at all. The board is possibly an inch too long for me, but it's close enough. It's also bright blue so I can see it when I fall off.

The very helpful chap in the shop seemed highly amused that this mad Englishwoman who clearly wasn't the sporting type had decided to take up snowboarding. Particularly as I'd failed to get ski boots yesterday. But then, if all else fails, he does an excellent trade in second-hand stuff. If he gets a slightly shorter board in later in the season I might trade the current one in for one that's the right length. Of course, I might also find that this one works perfectly well...

So now I had the boots and the board I went up to the ski slope. The slope itself is only about 10-15 minutes drive from the house although it's uphill all the way as the bottom of the ski lifts are a an altitude of 500m. What I hadn't taken into account was that it didn't open for another hour or so, so I satisfied myself with having a look around and taking a couple of pictures. The centre, Hlíðarfjall, also has a webcam, although it doesn't seem to be updated very often.

The drive down gives a fantastic view over the town. You can see it set against the fjord, although with the weather today the fjord was slate-grey rather than blue. On a fine day it must look very impressive.

I don't have any lectures tomorrow either so, weather permitting, I'll go into the office in the morning then go up to the slopes in the afternoon. In the meantime I shall get some work done here.

For any of you who need it, I think I have proof that I am insane. The proof is: I'm going to try snowboarding.

Yes, I know it is possibly one of the craziest things I've ever done, but what the hell, if I'm out here in Iceland I might as well make use of the snow.

So why am I not sticking with skiing? After all, I have skied before... In fact, that skied before was 20 years ago, if you ignore the day of pattern bruise collection on a dry slope just outside Edinburgh. Anything that I learned then I would just have to relearn now, so I don't think I'm missing out on that front.

Secondly, and possibly most importantly given my current location, I can't get a pair of ski boots that will fit my horrible pudgy calves. Or not here anyway; the pattern bruise collection centre managed to have some I could hire, but I can't buy any in Akureyri (although the chaps in the shop were very helpful). Snowboarding boots, however, lace up rather than having strange buckle things, and also don't go quite as high up the calf.

I'm also told that once you're past the first few days, snowboarding is easier than skiing. This appeals to me. :) The plan then, is to go back to the shop tomorrow and kit myself out for snowboarding, and maybe drive up to the slopes if the weather is up to it.

Besides, you seem to spend your first few attempts with only one foot in the bindings. I leaned to ice-skate that way, so at least it's a familiar concept.

I promise I'll try not to break any limbs.

I think I now have more red and white beads than I comfortably know what to do with.

Personally I blame Gonz. I'm currently doing some stuff for him, the first one of which I'm doing in chain stitch, nice and simple, it just uses a lot of DMC 321. But the next ones, the next ones are going to be beaded. So some time ago I looked at the red and white beads I had in stock and thought hmm... I'm going to need more than that. So I got some more. Then I saw some that looked better, so I bought them. And the other day I saw some white ones which would look even better, so I bought them too. Which meant that I had to find red ones to match, which I did today.

Perhaps I should start the beaded embroidery soon, before I see any more even better beads. :)

I knew that if I went into the craft shop that I was likely to come out with more beads - they do, after all, have the largest supply in Akureyri. What I was surprised at was that they didn't have any gold leaf for gilding stuff. It looks like I'll have to try Reykjavík for that. Either that, or I know exactly where I can get it in Aberdeen.

Which is useful, as I can now confirm that I'll be in Aberdeen in February. When I checked my snail-mail on the way out of the office on Friday I discovered and internal mail envelope in my mail tray. Of course it was in Icelandic, but I was pretty sure that it was about the travel funding I applied for just before Christmas. And I got it! I won! Well, won in a sort of academic type of winning. I'm particularly pleased as this is my first real research funding.

All I have to do now is get some research done over the next two years...

I'm beginning to wonder if the only way to transport anything by air is to put it in either a metal box or, at the very least, a samsonite case.

Since I came here to Iceland I've flown back to the UK and/or mainland Europe a number of times. During my travels I've noticed that the airlines - certainly the budget airline with whom I've travelled - don't seem to pay much attention to how they handle luggage.

This time (I've just finished unpacking, which is why this comes to mind), I had to buy a new hard-sided suitcase for the journey back because several straps on the old (i.e. two previous journeys) large bag had been almost ripped off. It's a nice big case with a harder shell than any of the others I've got, and I chose it specifically for solidity as well as size.

So I packed it carefully, filling up all the gaps so things wouldn't rattle around inside and damage each other, and what happens? I open it here in Iceland and find that every one of the five CD cases within it was cracked. Four DVD cases were also damaged. Normal cardboard and plastic boxes had dints in them. They certainly didn't go into the case in this state, so I see little other explanation for the damage apart from careless handling at the airports (Stanstead springs to mind as the probable culprit).

It's not the first time I've had luggage problems. The previous time I'd come through Stanstead everything was soaking wet after being left outside on a trolley in a rainstorm. It seriously makes me wonder if the only way to prevent damage to stuff in transit is to travel with hand baggage only. Which is not easy if you're doing more than an overnighter.

What, then, should I do? I have to check the fencing gear in on safety grounds, so I have to accept that they'll be mistreated. I suppose I can at least wrap the swords in my armour and hope for the best. But can I get everything I need for a business trip into a shoulderbag? Probably, assuming that I'm not going to an SCA event as well. Otherwise it's going to have to be back to the suitcases again.

I suppose it could be worse. I did here of someone who checked in their plate armour and received a lot of very flat metal at the far end. At least I don't have that problem.
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Keep looking at the book...

Do not hyperventilate.

Do not run around the room screaming.

Do not throw yourself off the roof.

What, you may ask, has caused this? I've run out of DMC shade 321, it's 16:00 on a Saturday afternoon and all of the craft/embroidery shops in Akureyri are closed.

Aaaarghhh!!!

I must remind myself that I have lots of other embroidery I can do, and I could even sort things into the clever storage boxes I've just bought to store things like embroidery threads. But I was making such progress with the piece, and I wanted to get the red finished before starting the white, and...

Maybe, just maybe, I'll find a stray skein of 321 when I tidy up. Maybe. Yeah, gotta go and look. Now.

***

4 hours later I have found a skein and a half of 321, together with two skeins of B5200 and one of BLANC, so I can now stop panicking and sit down for the rest of the evening to complete the red bits of the design. Phew!

I'm reading a wonderful book. It's Simon Singh's The Code Book, a history of codes and ciphers.

I almost didn't get it to Iceland at all, as I left it on the table at home just after it arrived in the post (ordered through Simon's own website, so it was both cheaper and signed - strange that) and the next thing I knew Dad was planning to take it on holiday with him. Now I've no problem with Dad borrowing it, but he only gets through a page or so a day each night before falling asleep, and I'd really not have to wait until Christmas next year to read it. Dad can have it once I've finished with it - in the meantime I've distracted him with a biography of Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, the man behind the Beaufort scale of windspeed.

I'm up to the beginning of the twentieth century so far. One of the particular reasons I had for buying it was that it looks at renaissance cryptography, which is, it turns out, much more complex than the variants on the basic Caeser cipher I had assumed. IT has even pointed me towards an astounding manuscript, that of John Baptista Porta, which is a sort of encyclopedia for the sixteenth century (translated into English and available on the web here. Not only do I foresee an article on renaissance cryptography for the Baelfyr, the SCA's local UK/Ireland/Iceland magazine, but also a number of others based upon topics in this manuscript alone.

The code/cipher I was particularly looking for when I discovered Simon's book was the one used by Mary Queen of Scots to communicate with her supporters during her imprisonment in England. The book not only tells the whole tale of the Babington plot but also includes a copy of the nomenclature that Mary used. (A nomenclature is a code whereby the letters of the alphabet are replaced by symbols and further symbols are added for common or specific words.)

As I said earlier, I've now got to the beginning of the twentieth century, having passed through the period of Louis IV's Great Cipher and the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask, through Babbage's (yes, the Difference/Analytical Engine chap) cracking of the chiffre indéchiffrable, a very clever code developed in the fifteenth century and then ignored for two hundred years, to the strange case of gold hidden somewhere in California and kept safe by a still-undeciphered cipher.

What I'm really looking forward to is a detailed account of how Enigma worked. That and the cracking of Linear B and the Rosetta stone. I know, this is definitely a book for a geek with an interest in history, but that pretty much describes me. I would certainly recommend it for other historically-inclined geeks out there.

After the needlework triumph of completing the goldwork, I am now settling down to something a little less fiddly - eight badges commissioned by Goncalves. And only two of them will involve metal threads.

No, I don't want to look at metal threads again for a while, although I do have plans for a couple of things using underside couching instead of surface couching. Fortunately they're nowhere near as large as the folder.

It was 2 am before I got to sleep this morning, I was so excited at completing it. Unfortunately I had a lab to supervise at 8 am, so I didn't get too much sleep, and after that lab and the following two hours (also a lab, but a much quieter one that involved letting my students play Cleudo) I was pretty shattered. Not tired enough though, that I didn't spend the afternoon following Huygens descent and landing on Titan.

I am so looking forward to the pictures - and sounds - from that one. I'm very jealous of those people who've managed to make astronomy a career. Expect me to enthuse more about the programme over the weekend.

At last, the goldwork is finished. It has taken a total of 53 hours of stitching, two spools of DMC gold thread, a metre and a half of Madeira broad gold braid, 5 metres of black cord, a large spool of pale yellow quilting thread, about a third of a skein of DMC embroidery thread and a small block of wax (the type that comes in the little plastic holder).

Image here

The stitching is 32cm by 26cm, and the full documentation will be available online shortly.

HURRAH!

***

Addendum: Sometimes I get an access denied (although not always) - I'll fix this in the morning, but for now I'm going to bed.

Addendum to the addendum: Access problem fixed - I think

I'm almost there with the goldwork. All of the pieces are complete, I've appliqued them onto the backing, and I've started the outlining.

I was a little concerned that I might have got it wrong with the thickness of cord I'm using to outline the pieces, but it looks good from 5 feet away so I think it should be OK.

This looks good from 10 feet away thing always gets me. I forget that some things are designed to be seen from a distance, not close up. From a distance you can't see the fine stitching, but that's OK as it's a bit uneven in places. Yeah, I'm a perfectionist, I know.

One thing I did need for this was a bigger frame to mount it on while I do the outlining. All of my frames are either too small or are roller frames, and there's no way the goldwork will roll up. It's one of these techniques that has to be done on a flat working surface. So I went into the quilting shop this afternoon and got myself a nice big 17-inch square quilting frame - the type you fold the fabric over then use long clips to hold it in place. Better still, the shop was having its post-Christmas sale and I got the frame at 15% off. I do so love it when my favourite shops have sales.

So tonight I'm going to curl up in my comfy chair, set the DVD to play the CDs of the second series of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and get as much of the outlining done as possible. I've been doing the documentation as I went along, so it won't take long once it's complete to put that up on the web together with lots of piccies.

I'm getting all excited now that it's almost finished. Excuse me while I go and get stitching. :)

At dawn on a clear day, a pale yellow light outlines the dark mountains as they sit heavily beneath an ice-blue sky. The band of light intensifies, yet pales in colour until it is almost white, and on the grey masses of mountainside faint details become visible, folds in the fjord-walls where the snow lies not so thick, or sits in deeper shadow.

The land around becomes visible; the sodium yellow pinpoints that showed a human touch now glow not against the dark of the night, but the dark wood and concrete of buildings. A line of bare trees breaks the near horizon, black against the more distant mountains which themselves are beginning to lighten as the sky begins to take on the colour of day.

How's that for the view from my office window?

I've just had a terrible shock. I have found a grey hair.

I knew it had to happen sooner or later. After all, my paternal grandmother was silver by 40, and her sister didn't even make it into her thirties before losing all colour. But on the other side of my family the colour last much longer, and my maternal grandmother was still definitely brown rather than grey at 60. I suppose I've done pretty well to make it to 39 before it happened.

I'm trying to console myself with the knowledge that some of my closest friends who are younger than me started going grey ten years ago. It's not working though, and the spectre of senescence is just standing there laughing on the other side of the mirror. What hope is there for Nik 3.11 (I am, at least, network-enabled) when the world is now expecting Nik XP or at the very least Nik 2000?

So what do I do now? Purple has appeal, or maybe a nice bright russet. Petal claims she doesn't remember what colour her hair is (a fantastic titian red - I remember, as it's sickeningly gorgeous). and Mum is blonde most of the time nowadays. I used to colour it to try to make it look interesting, instead of the boring dark reddish-brown it actually is; the normal response to dissatisfaction with myself. But now... it now seems a different matter somehow.

Must be time to do that transfer of consciousness to a mechanical shell. Anyone know where I can get a good droid body that looks like a young Sigourney Weaver, Claudia Black or Allyson Hannigan?

OK, file that one as snow stopped play. Fifteen minutes of shovelling and the path, which I cleared ten minutes ago, now has another inch or so of snow on it. And the back path I was trying to dig out to has disappeared into the whiteness.

On the up side though, there is now a section almost three feet wide across the back of the car where the original two long spadelengths of snow is down to a couple of inches. And the snow isn't actually too hard to move as it's quite light and fluffy, although that does mean that it gets whipped up by the wind very easily and I can therefore only pile it up to leeward or it blows everywhere - into the new hole, into my face, into the path...

I think this calls for a curling up indoors and working at home sort of day. And maybe a lemsip or two.

Togay I gave my first lectures of the semester - 2 hours on functional programming and another 2 on HCI.

They both went pretty well, although it's difficult to maintain interest over a 2 hour lecture, even with a coffee break in the middle. It's a tough timetabling problem, that. I have two 2-hour periods per module, which are split into lecture time and lab time. The big question is, do I do a 2-hour lecture and a seperate 2-hour lab, or do I instead do a 1-hour lecture with a lab immediately following it.

What I'd prefer would be a 2-hour lab and two 1-hour lectures, but that doesn't seem to happen in the Real World nowadays. It didn't happen at RGU either, so it's not unique to the Icelandic system. Well, I say 1-hour; in practise they're actually 45 minutes, which is a more reasonable length for a lecture.

Now that I think about it, I remember having consecutive 40-minute lessons at school with no break in the middle. If the normal adult attention span is 20 minutes, then how much shorter is that of a child or a teenager? Was this a case of the triumph of organisational theory over pedagogical theory right from the start?

On the other hand, I know that nowadays I'm always delighted to find a documentary that's longer than the standard 47 minutes fits into a 1 hour slot including adverts, so clearly longer academic presentations have their advantages, the greatest being that you can go into more depth in a longer lecture. I would be perfectly happy for editions of the BBC's Horizon programme to be feature-length rather than the standard length.

This is, I appreciate, intellectual snobbery and not likely to have any effect on programme makers, but it is of relevence to writing lectures. If I've got an hour and a half I have to make lectures interesting, even more so than for a 45 minute lecture. That's not too bad in HCI, which is an intrinsically interesting subject (IMO), but a little trickier with functional programming (probably intrinsically interesting to mathematicians but not to dyscalculics like myself).

Instead, I have to see the intellectual challenge of Something New. In fact functional programming has given me a whole new way of looking at problems, as I found when I looked at a programming problem over Christmas. I'm not sure I'll convert from a C programmer to a Haskell programmer, but it certainly has some interesting ideas.

So somehow I have to find some way to make it interesting, and that is, for me as an educator, the bigger challenge.

***

P.S. Akureyri now has its own webcam, courtesy of my colleague the Moose. For an up-to-date view from a window on the opposite side of the building to my office, click here. Be warned though - as I write it is pitch dark, and decent daylight isn't expected again until 11:00 tomorrow morning.

As I was walking back from work today a strange thought occurred to me. In all the snow I have seen here in the last couple of months I haven't seen a single snowman.

I would have though that, given the sheer volume of snow available, large ornate snowmen would be springing up all over the place. And not necessarily just snowmen - I have myself taken part in the building of snowmen, snow daleks and snow beeblebears during my post-graduate years, so it can't just be an age thing.

Is the Icelandic temperament just not given to the creation of snow statuary? It is, after all, an art form, and they are very big on arts and crafts. The climate here lends itself to the art, not just in providing plenty of raw materials, but also in ensuring that works will last more than the paltry couple of days a UK snowman can survive.

Maybe it's the idea of ruining unspoilt beauty of the surrounding area, rolling up large balls of snow. But you could avoid that by taking snow from the large piles of snow swept from the roads. Or perhaps it's that the days are short and those individuals given to building snowmen are in school or work during daylight hours.

Perhaps I should take the lead and spend Saturday building a snowman to get the ball rolling, as it were. I shall give this idea due consideration and report back later.

I'm in Akureyri again and guess what? It's three feet deep in snow.

Doug was kind enough to collect me from the airport in spite of a rotten cold, and it turns out that it was touch and go whether his 4-wheel-drive would make it out there. My car is sitting in a snowdrift (pictures to follow) and there's no way he's moving until we have a major thaw.

With that in mind we stopped at the supermarket on the way back, where reality hit me in the face in the shape of a £50 groceries bill. Admittedly, I was buying a bit extra because the weather is likely to limit my shopping forays for a while, but it was still a bit of a shock. Ah... I'm wallowing in nostalgia at thought of the day of shopping in Tesco on Wednesday where some stuff including a tub of Ben&Jerry's Cherry Garcia came to less than £14. I'd had my Icelandic Shopping Head on at the time and had expected it to be over £20, so I was quite delighted. That, and having found Cherry Garcia in the first place, although Karamel Sutra ran it a close second for my selection.

I've been away from my main email accounts for three and a bit weeks and have just logged in to find about 150 new messages. I've clearly been getting complacent after transferring to the Beeb address, as that looks like quite a lot to me, but at the old Demon address I would have got that on a daily basis and all but 2 of those would be spam. The signal-to-noise ratio is much higher nowadays.

The new semester starts tomorrow. My lectures don't start until 10:00 on Tuesday, but I have a heavy teaching load this term - a total of eight hours of student contact a week. I've finally decided that I'm going to do IT Faculty Cleudo rather than Microsoft Monopoly as the HCI coursework. My poor third-year students will be forced to spend two hours this Thursday afternoon familiarising themselves with the problem (a.k.a. playing the game).

Sometimes I am so cruel.

One of the main reasons for timing my flight back as I did was to be at the SCA meeting today here on the base. I'm glad I did, as it has turned into the best meeting so far.

Not only did I start doing heraldic stuff (I have 4 sets of names and devices to get working on), but I also got mundane and persona names, details and interests for almost everyone in the shire plus photographs for the website. Although I have to admit, my heraldic efforts were not what captured the most attention.

You see, Ealdormere has sent us a gift of armour. It is sufficient that we can now get three people into armour at once (if you include Matt and Rebecca's own armour). I think that, as herald, I'm going to have to write an official thank-you and come up with a gift to send them in return, particularly as we're not even part of Ansteorra. We ended up spending a lot of the afternoon tweaking bits of armour to fit Joe and Casey then taking lots of photos of them working out with the pell Matt has built or fighting on the ice and snow-covered grass behind the appartments.

The fighting outside had a major side-effect: publicity. There were easily a dozen folks watching from the windows of the blocks opposite, never mind those from the block we were in. Several children also stood fascinated by the sight of maniacs in armour hitting each other. And Matt's armour is very pretty and quite effective in these circumstances. The photos are available in the photo gallery (or will be very soon).

It pains me to say it, but even I have to accept that the heavies probably caused more of a stir than fencers would have. You just don't see that sort of armour nowadays; it's bound to raise eyebrows. We decided that it counts as our first fighter practice, and these will be happening at all of the bi-weekly meetings from now on. On the other hand, it'll split the meeting into two truly functional groups, one fighting and one doing A&S stuff rather than just having people sitting around all doing the same thing or talking. I must sit down and have a think about the sorts of things I can do with them.

One thing we have decided is that we're going to build a trebuchet. Hurrah! I have woodwork-capable people - a number of them - to help. OK, so we won't be able to get it to events on the mainland, but I think it's a great project and so do they. More things for me to sit and think about. When the weather clears I'm going to have to give thought to driving/flying down more than once a month some months.

For now though, the weather is decidedly inclement. I spoke to Doug on the phone earlier and he told me that there had been about ten inches of snow in Akureyri today. Good things I have some non-perishable stuff in the house for when I get there. Assuming I do get there tomorrow, that is.

This is it; the end of the holidays and the return to Iceland. It seems such a short time to have been away... or then again maybe it's just that time is passing quickly. I'm not sure which answer I prefer.

The train from Leuchars to Edinburgh was pretty mundane, although the GNER rolling stock on the east coast main line - the route of the Flying Scotsman, as it announced on the side of the trains - was in considerably poorer repair than that of the Virgin west coast main line service. I certainly wouldn't want to go into space with GNER.

It was raining in Edinburgh. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement - it was absolutely chucking it down as the tail end of last night's storms passed away to the south. Edinburgh traffic was in a bit of a mess due to downed trees and power lines but the trains were unaffected. The short walk out of Waverley station and over the road to the airport bus stop was sufficient to leave me soaking wet, although I admit that my speed was a little slower than usual as the result of lugging my heavy suitcase with me.

And yes, the suitcase was heavy. Very heavy. I got the EasyJet checkin staff to weigh it for me before I checked in and discovered that it was just over 34kg. Well... 34kg... that's less than 24kg plus 15kg of sporting equipment, isn't it? So they won't charge me excess baggage, right?

Wrong. It turns out that if you're not carrying sporting equipment then you can carry 24kg on an internal flight, 20kg on an international flight. And the luggage handlers won't lift anything heavier than 32kg. Why, I don't know. If I, as a non-professional lifter of heavy loads can lift it then I don't see why the professionals can't. It seems to be just the way life is. A quick rearrangement of stuff was called for, and I removed 5.5kg of books into my backpack with the computer, paid the excess, and everyone was happy even though I had more than 5kg of hand luggage.

A little more creative packing and the purchasing of a cheap and cheerful Cotton Traders carryall at Stanstead and I was entirely legal again in spite of buying a bottle of whisky, some chocolate and a copy of Cluedo (for work purposes). How? Well, it turns out that you're entitled to a hold-all, a handbag, a computer bag and a bag of duty-free stuff plus an overcoat. So I took most of the stuff out of the backpack other than the computer and some A4 books (leaving it looking less than straining at the seams) and put them and my handbag into the carry-all. Everything now met airline regulations and I paid the excess baggage on the suitcase. I may end up having to pay almost as much to get those extra 8kg to Iceland as I did to get myself and the first 20 there in the first place.

Then, in spite of the Stanstead internal railway breaking down while I was on it, and the aircraft taking off 20 minutes late due to high winds and incoming RyanAir flights crossing the runway in front of us, I was on my way back north once more. The Iceland Express cabin staff assumed I was an Icelander returning home (possibly due to my wonderful blue Icelandic sweater and my ability to ask for ekki mjolk - no milk - with my coffee) and I swept through customs unquestioned this time. Not that it would have been a problem - one bottle of whisky is well within the legal limits.

Keflavik was cold and windy. It was a dry wind that made the airport feel much colder than the -3C the pilot had announced upon our approach. Matt and Rebecca collected me from the airport in the Big Red Van and took me back to the base where I surprised the guards by being neither American nor Icelandic. Clearly the ones who are used to me were not on duty tonight.

We played D&D until 2am. I love this gaming thing! I am so glad to get back to it. It almost makes the whole journey worthwhile. It's new characters all around and this time I'm going for the telepathic bard. The world will never be safe again...